Monthly Archives: August 2010

A major new version of TunerFreeMCE has just been launched. It includes a huge number of new features that people have been asking for;

A new popup screen for managing the TV programs, allowing you to play the program, set a timer recording to record other showings of the program if you have a TV tuner configured, and if the program supports it you can add it to a playlist or download it (the last two work for BBC WMV programs, but not flash).

When playing flash content, sometimes the mouse didn't click in the right place. Now you can mode the cursor round the screen with the remote by pressing the cursor keys, and OK to click. This allows you to play even the most troublesome programs.

The interface is now touchscreen enabled, so if you have a touchscreen media center you can easily navigate through the screens.

Plugins are now directly available within the application. When you go to preferences you will see a list of plugins. When you pick one, the system will take care of installing and updating it to keep you up to date with your favourite content.

MSN has been removed. This is because there is now a native media center app to support MSN.

Improved memory management – only one instance of TunerFreeMCE will be active at any one time

This new version of TunerFreeMCE is for Windows 7 only. The reason is that Vista Media Center doesn't support some of the code that I needed to make these improvements happen. Before making this choice I did look at the number of existing TunerFreeMCE users who are still using Vista (when the system checks for new versions, it sends the OS version so that we know what file to send). Those statistics show that just over two thirds of active TunerFreeMCE installations are already using Windows 7, so this update is applicable to the vast majority of users. For the third of users still on Vista, it's important to remember that while you don't get these latest features, TunerFreeMCE will keep working, and you can keep watching all your favourite programs streamed straight to your media center.